Speaking of Super Bowls and odds, I found one dubious statistic mentioned in the pregame ceremony. Announcer Al Michaels said that the odds of the NFC team winning the coin toss 11 times in a row (which they had) was 2000 to 1. Did the venerable play-by-play man mistake one team winning the coin toss--ostensibly by calling either heads or tails--with the odds of, say, heads being the outcome 11 times in a row? Help me out here, Numbers Guy!

6:32 pm February 2, 2009

SethG wrote:

Jason, the odds are the same. The probability of the NFC team winning any given coin toss is 1/2, the same as the probability that any given toss winds up heads.

So there was still a 50% chance that the NFC team would win the toss yesterday (they did), but the chances that the NFC would have won the last 12 is 1 in 2^12. (The chances that _one_ of the leagues would win the last 12 is 1 in 2^11, and the chances that a 12-year streak would have occurred at some point in the 43 super bowls is higher still...)

Also, note that it's unlikely that one can choose a given score when selecting his square--it's customary to randomly fill in the digits along the axes _after_ people have selected their squares.

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The Wall Street Journal examines numbers in the news, business and politics. Some numbers are flat-out wrong or biased, while others are valid and help us make informed decisions. We tell the stories behind the stats in occasional updates on this blog.